Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

I was and still am a fan of WindowMaker, for all the reasons others have given. Lately I've switched to GNOME because I find myself constantly mounting thumb drives and DVDs, etc. In the old days there was a wmmount app for the dock that did this, and you set up your fstab so the mount points were all defined. These days I don't configure fstab. I'll have multiple USB drives plugged in and GNOME will just assign the mount point a name based on the volume label and mount them. If WindowMaker could do this I'd give up GNOME and never look back.

WindowMaker also makes it really easy to create themes and backgrounds for your desktop and switch them. Switching backgrounds in GNOME is a much bigger deal to go through.

Booki was what there was before Booktype, and FLOSS Manuals used other software before Booki which I also used. The great thing about all this software is that many people can collaborate on a book online, then distribute in in multiple formats:

1). As a website2). As a PDF that can be published as a print-on-demand book by Lulu or Create Space.3). As an EPUB (which you can run Kindlegen on to create a MOBI for the Kindkle).4). As a "newspaper".

I have no idea which navigation elements you are referring to. I have an XO, I test my Activities on an IBM NetVista running Fedora 10, and I have tried Sugar on a Stick. The one thing the XO does that my other computers don't is it it can rotate the screen image. Handy, but not indispensable. While the XO has special keys for moving between its different views, in fact they are just F1-F4 with different labels. The special keys on either side of the display map to the numeric keypad on a regular keyboard. IMHO Sugar works just fine on any PIII or better machine.

I'd like to correct the title of this post. What Sugar Labs is creating is NOT a fork of Sugar. It is the thing itself. There is no other version of Sugar being developed now. Sugar Labs is making Sugar available in all major Linux distros, as well as creating the version that runs on the XO and Sugar on a Stick. All this will make it possible for far more children to be able to use Sugar.

What the schools do is irrelevant. It's what the kids do. And what the kids can do with this software is:

Learn to program in Turtle Art (like LOGO), Smalltalk (EToys), or Python (Pippy).Download and read free books from Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive.Write documents with a word processor that allows collaboration: multiple authors of the same document at the same time.Draw pictures with Activities that support the same kind of collaboration.Run the GCompris suite of educational Activities, which teach basic math concepts, etc.Play games that develop thinking skills...and a bunch of other stuff.

Plus, this software does not replace Windows. It runs off a stick. So the school can have a computer lab full of Windows boxes to teach the next generation of office drones, and the kids can still use SoaS on those boxes without interfering in any way with that important task.

Yes, you can use Sugar on a Stick with your old PC that doesn't support booting from a USB drive. In this case in addition to the thumb drive you need to make a "helper CD". Your system boots off the helper CD but all the data goes on the thumb drive. This is not just a Live CD to try out Sugar; it's a system children can actually use to do all their work. It's quite impressive and I encourage all Slashdot readers to try it out.

Serenity should be the name of a spacecraft, not a mere room on a space station. For a mere room "Colbert" is as good as any other name. It does, however, make me wish I had written in the name I thought of after the promotion was over:

"The Howard Johnson's Earthlight Room".

Now *that's* a name for a room on a space station. And you could probably get Howard Johnson's to pay something for the naming rights. If they're still in business, of course. The one I went to as a kid is now a Hooters.

nicestepauthor writes "Like many of you I participated in the Give One Get One program for One Laptop Per Child. I see on their website that if you ordered between Nov 12-15, 2007 you should get your XO laptop somewhere between Dec 14-24, 2007. I ordered mine on November 13th and have not received it yet. Has anyone else received their XO laptop yet? If so, what do you think of it?"Link to Original Source